The South sought by secession to absolve itself from the domination of the masses. It was like the patricians of Rome seeking the Sacred Hill to build a new city. It failed, as will ever the minority, representing a false idea of American society and a false conception of the spirit with which every American is imbued, do in the future. But, be it said to the credit of the believers in aristocracy in 1860, that they had the courage of their convictions, and they fought a manly battle to establish that which is impossible in America. The history of the Southerners’ sufferings and dangers, endured uncomplainingly, forms a bright and shining exception to the conduct of the typical believer in “caste.” Sham aristocracy, which has disregarded the rights and wounded the feelings of the people for the past twenty-five years, that sham aristocracy which is a direct outgrowth resulting from the suppression of the Southern aristocracy, if tested as the Southern aristocracy has been, would be found deficient in those qualities of courage and determination which made even the Southerners’ false ideas respected and respectable. The sham aristocracy of to-day, unlike the false aristocracy of 1860, would hire bullies, outcasts, and vagrants to do their fighting, as did those magnificent illustrations of “caste” in our country, Carnegie and Frick, at Homestead, and Son-in-law Webb at Buffalo. The advocates of “caste” in 1860, the Southerners, not alone possessed courage and determination, but, accepting the result of the conflict, have exhibited since the days of Reconstruction that wonderful degree of political acumen for which they have ever been famous. Early recognizing that in their struggle for an independent national existence, the Southern Confederacy, they had been defeated--not by the aristocracy of the North and West, but by the Common People; that is, the most powerful portion of the population of the Union--the Southerner, the secessionist, the aristocrat of 1860, submerged himself in the ocean of the Common People, the great majority, the democracy! The Secessionist, who opposed Abraham Lincoln’s administration in 1860 and used bullets to express his opposition in 1861, had firm conviction carried to his hesitating heart by the events that transpired between 1861 and 1865, that the “Common People”--the majority--must rule; and that with the freeing of his slaves he had lost the only possible foundation upon which he could rest his claim of social superiority in this country. Therefore, as the wise man that he has demonstrated himself to be, the aristocrat of 1860 has become the most earnest and patriotic member of a broad democracy in 1892; realizing from experience that upon that rock alone he can build the edifice of prosperity in his section of the country; also realizing from a sad experience that the Common People, democracy (though it was called Abraham Lincoln’s Republican party), was the crag upon which his bark